Composing easy? I find it easy if - big if - the idea is right, if I have the right collaborator, and if my collaborator is in the room. I like my collaborator to be in the room.
— Alan Menken
I always wanted to have a villain song for Hades in 'Hercules,' but I couldn't figure out how we would have Hades sing.
There was a jingle house called Lucas/McFaul in New York, and they called me 'the demo king.' I almost never had the big final - in jingles, you have the big final, and then you sing on it, and you make a good deal of money.
Whatever I gain from writing lyrics, I feel I lose a little bit for the musical aspect by having that lyrical burden on me. But when I'm liberated from worrying about the words, frankly, I feel I'm a better composer.
It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.
Music can be witty, but it's not funny unless it's conceptually funny.
I was always a composer since I was a kid, but the BMI Workshop is where the networking really all stems from. So many writers and influences and ways of communicating all sprang out of the time I was a member of that workshop.
I see my songs and shows almost like a mosaic - part of a bigger picture.
Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm.
A villain number is a very valuable thing to have, but if you look at most musicals, one way or another there's an antagonist number.
'Snow White' was really hip for its time. Walt Disney was basically using Sigmund Romberg and operetta in the telling of the story, and through animation - that was revolutionary.
My first success was 'Little Shop of Horrors,' and I had been working for years on jingles.
When I write the music for any of my songs, I write as a composer-lyricist in my head.
I have lots of personal feelings of my own, but at this stage in my life and career, I'm very much driven by assignment.
There's plenty of examples of films where they're greenlit to move forward, and they want to get X actor. And they don't get X actor, so they go with Y, and it doesn't turn out to be as good of a movie as it should have been.
For a brief period, I had a gentleman's farm in Pennsylvania, but even then, I kept a place in New York.
I have a team who I respect immensely, so if they have opinions, I'm interested in hearing them.
I always felt great about what I wrote for 'Newsies,' but 'Newsies' was a total flop.
Truth be told, of course, what I enjoy most is reinventing myself and doing new projects where I work in new genres, or I get to find what the voice of a particular musical is.
Most of my collaborations, certainly post - Howard Ashman but even with Howard, are music first.
The job, when you write film underscore, is to be ignored. That comes with the gig, no question about it.
Music is a gestalt. Songs are a life force and they have specific vocabulary to them. You hear a few notes, and they take you into a world of association.
As a kid, I loved classical music. Composers like Beethoven were like rock stars to me. Then there were the real rock stars: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.
When I was younger, I'd get very invested in things. It's a hard lesson to learn, but you have to know that if you want to find gold, you've got to love the process of digging.
I can't get into the underlying psyche of someone like Robin Williams, but he was at that level of fame where he was somewhat self-protective.
